Broken-Hearted? We Tried Out Mumbai's Very Own Break-Up Helpline

There's therapy for almost everything in this city. We found a helpline for people who've just broken up with their partner, and it apparently does the magic that the sea breeze at Queen's Necklace (and Nutella) fails to do. Read on.

The Breakup Helpline is a Mumbai-based business which offers counselling to the broken-hearted over email, phone calls and Whatsapp. The helpline was started in 2012, though we only came across it recently. According to the website, the service promises to be available for their clients 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

What They Offer: You can choose a type of helpline service on the basis of your needs. There's the ‘mini shot’ for INR 500, valid for three days of complaining and wallowing, a Whatsapp shot for INR 1,500 for two weeks of unlimited texting, INR 2,500 for the mini breakup kit, for everything from emails and calls to personal meetings and fun activities to get your mind off the matter. Interestingly, they also have doctor on demand for INR 1,000 per consultation, who can answer all your questions.

We signed up on the website, and within 24 hours, we had a response in our inbox asking for more details about what went wrong in our romantic life. While we took a day or two to respond (wracking our brains for the right fictional problem to have), they dropped us another email, sounding concerned about our well-being. At this point, we wrote back a slightly halting, yet clearly heart-broken email. They replied to our admittedly sparse details with a long, point-by-point breakdown with what had presumably gone wrong in our last relationship. Some of the points were surprisingly insightful, while some were obviously a bit of a reach. The email exchange went back and forth for a while (by the end of which we were kind of scratching our heads about what problem to present).

P.S: All their answers were prompt, detailed and thoughtful. Also interestingly, all these initial emails are free of cost. They also followed up every morning after that with a check-in email, inquiring about our well-being.

We can definitely see how this service would be surprisingly useful, especially to the heart-broken who don’t want to deal with the well-meaning but misguided advice from friends which usually includes some version of ‘you’re better off’. We say don’t waste time being bummed out about your last romantic misadventure, and drop them an email now.